I can't believe it's been nearly a week since my last post. Please forgive that....but honestly (we can be honest, right?) It's been one of those weeks. Stuff comes up. Things go wrong that you weren't expecting. And you lose it (or am I the only one?). And you come down hard, knowing you should have done better, could have leaned harder on your Strength. And then, you fall. And you hardly know you're falling, and you find yourself there, again, where it all started. At the foot of His cross. And you realize once more that beautiful truth. Once you have accepted Him, He'll not let you go...He sees you with His Son's righteousness, not your own filthy rags. You feel filthy, and lowly, and unworthy of His love. But He reminds you again of His forgiveness...it's not like ours. He forgives all, past, present, future. And He never looks at it again. Sure, we still confess and get things right with Him, but aren't you glad we wear His robe? And He sees us as pure, clean, beautiful creatures? I once read words that went something like this, " You came to Christ to let Him clean the spotted garment of your heart. And He did. Now stop being defeated. Go dance in your now spotless gown. Be the belle of the ball of life, and recommend others to your Great Cleaner. Don't hide away in shame as you did before He cleaned you. Because you still perceive spots. But He doesn't. And His eyes are perfect." Let this be a week of dancing in our salvation...loving Christ as we never have before, thanking Him as we never have before, letting His cleansing do its work in our hearts, holding nothing back. And praising Him as never before for His great forgiveness, mercy, and love!

Dirt and Discipleship

If you've known my family for any length of time, you know that weird, silly, or just plain annoying things happen to us daily. (i.e. the day the goat got into the house, or the chicken, for that matter ).Well, today's "event" was one of those annoying ones that gives you a chance to handle things gracefully .(unfortunately, I didn't do such a good job on that one) Anyway, my brother Joshua is 13 and has a lot of special needs. One of his strengths is his love to help, and one of his favorite things to help with is vacuuming. Well, today , he decided to be extra helpful, and empty the filter for me. Sadly, he decided that the most convenient place to do that was right on the living room floor! Thank God we don't have carpet!The whole point of sharing this story is just to say that annoying things happen. They always will , but it's our choice how we react to it.And if we don't react in a godly way , we have the choice of being mad at ourselves forever , or just moving on and learning from our mistakes.

Tonight we had a BRIGHT Lights meeting, which is a discipleship group that I lead for young ladies . We had our largest group ever (4!),and everything went really well. Praise God! One of the reasons that leading a godly, graceful life is so important, for girls and guys, is so that we can be an example to those who are younger than us. Believe me I'm nowhere close to where I should be , but this is one of the motivating factors that keeps me trying .

So, with renewed perspective, maybe we can try for one more day at a time, dealing with our everyday annoyances a little more graciously, and escaping the temptation to act unkindly towards our family when these sorts of things happen.

1 Corinthians 10:13~ There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man:but God is faithful , who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape , that ye may be able to bear it.~